December 31, 2012

See ya on the flip side

The presents were unwrapped, dreams came true, tackle hugs were given (I love sib gifts on Christmas Eve!).

The mess mostly cleaned up (trying to undecorate today, but no one else is on board with this...).

Should we just leave the skylanders like this? Hmm.

We've had a couple little minor illnesses during our Christmas vacation, but it hasn't put too big a damper on things since we're such homebodies anyway. We plan a 'staycation' during Christmas each year. We mostly hibernate and hang out together, which we all LOVE and look forward to all year. It's almost over, and we have had a great, relaxing time. Didn't cook as much as we wanted (but how did we run the dishwasher so often??), didn't keep up with laundry, didn't go out for our lunch date, but lots of fun stuff.

This will be the first year everyone (tries) to stay up till Midnight in our family on New Year's Eve! We would have done it last year, but... didn't. Can I just say I'm SO happy to say goodbye to 2012? Not our finest year. It started with stressful work stuff/layoff, followed by the fire, which pretty much meant the next 6 months were crazy stressful (and did I ever tell you that Aaron's car died on the WAY HOME during the fire? Seriously?). Aaron and I both got more grey hair this year. We stressed. And stressed. Things worked out okay, but it WASN'T a fun year. The HOURS and hours and hours of work we did. Countless. The having workers at our house banging on stuff. I haven't mentioned this recently, but remember we live by a golf course? That complicated things and was an extra worry. And was annoying. REALLY annoying (think people climbing over our wreckage to go through it looking for their ball). I was really worried someone would get hit by a ball while working on our house/fence before the nets were back up. So grateful no one was.

After our fire, it was the summer of fires around here. We could look out the window and see giant plumes about once a week or so. Crazy stuff.

Not to mention some anxiety I've had to work through (leaving the kids alone in the house took some extra guts and extra calls to check on them, every time we leave the house I still have a panic about whether I left something on, every time I saw those plumes of smoke while out and about I'd have to calm myself down by figuring out the direction the smoke was coming in couldn't be MY HOUSE this time. Because it was once.) Traumatic. I never told you the whole story of that afternoon, but let's just say there was some trauma. For everybody.

*DEEP BREATH*

Okay, but there were some positives. We could still be in our house, unlike our next door neighbors who couldn't move back in for 4 months. We celebratedsomecoolthings, we were able to take a vacation - didn't think that would happen (it was MUCH NEEDED by that point)... but I'm still ready for a fresh start. Smell ya later, 2012.

Comments

The presents were unwrapped, dreams came true, tackle hugs were given (I love sib gifts on Christmas Eve!).

The mess mostly cleaned up (trying to undecorate today, but no one else is on board with this...).

Should we just leave the skylanders like this? Hmm.

We've had a couple little minor illnesses during our Christmas vacation, but it hasn't put too big a damper on things since we're such homebodies anyway. We plan a 'staycation' during Christmas each year. We mostly hibernate and hang out together, which we all LOVE and look forward to all year. It's almost over, and we have had a great, relaxing time. Didn't cook as much as we wanted (but how did we run the dishwasher so often??), didn't keep up with laundry, didn't go out for our lunch date, but lots of fun stuff.

This will be the first year everyone (tries) to stay up till Midnight in our family on New Year's Eve! We would have done it last year, but... didn't. Can I just say I'm SO happy to say goodbye to 2012? Not our finest year. It started with stressful work stuff/layoff, followed by the fire, which pretty much meant the next 6 months were crazy stressful (and did I ever tell you that Aaron's car died on the WAY HOME during the fire? Seriously?). Aaron and I both got more grey hair this year. We stressed. And stressed. Things worked out okay, but it WASN'T a fun year. The HOURS and hours and hours of work we did. Countless. The having workers at our house banging on stuff. I haven't mentioned this recently, but remember we live by a golf course? That complicated things and was an extra worry. And was annoying. REALLY annoying (think people climbing over our wreckage to go through it looking for their ball). I was really worried someone would get hit by a ball while working on our house/fence before the nets were back up. So grateful no one was.

After our fire, it was the summer of fires around here. We could look out the window and see giant plumes about once a week or so. Crazy stuff.

Not to mention some anxiety I've had to work through (leaving the kids alone in the house took some extra guts and extra calls to check on them, every time we leave the house I still have a panic about whether I left something on, every time I saw those plumes of smoke while out and about I'd have to calm myself down by figuring out the direction the smoke was coming in couldn't be MY HOUSE this time. Because it was once.) Traumatic. I never told you the whole story of that afternoon, but let's just say there was some trauma. For everybody.

*DEEP BREATH*

Okay, but there were some positives. We could still be in our house, unlike our next door neighbors who couldn't move back in for 4 months. We celebratedsomecoolthings, we were able to take a vacation - didn't think that would happen (it was MUCH NEEDED by that point)... but I'm still ready for a fresh start. Smell ya later, 2012.